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Miscellaneous unorganized material/WSIL-TV
edit History WSIL signed on-the-air for the first time on December 1, 1953. It originally broadcast an analog signal on UHF channel 22 but moved to VHF channel 3 in March 1959 as did numerous stations originally assigned to UHF allocations before the FCC mandated that television-set manufacturers include UHF tuning capability in their products in 1964. The original UHF transmitter had been built in Harrisburg before the three cities of Paducah, Kentucky, Harrisburg, and Cape Girardeau, Missouri had been collapsed into one large market. However, some parts of Southeastern Missouri could not receive this channel's signal clearly presumably because WSIL had to conform it to protect WREC-TV (now WREG-TV) in Memphis, Tennessee in the next market to the south. As a result, KPOB signed-on September 15, 1967 to provide service to those counties although Jonesboro, Arkansas' KAIT (another ABC station) may have been visible in much of the area. For many years, WSIL did not clear the weeknight broadcasts of ABC News airing instead a children's show featuring cartoons and Three Stooges shorts in the 5:30 to 6:30 time slot. It was not until sometime in the late-970s they became the last ABC affiliates in the United States to abandon the practice of preempting the network news. However in ABC's earlier years, quite a number of local stations did not carry the newscasts because their ratings trailed competitors CBS and NBC by a large margin. This changed when ABC initiated the World News Tonight (now ABC World News) format in 1978 finally establishing the network as a significant news operation. WSIL had the unique distinction of being the first station in the market to broadcast a digital signal at a full 1 megawatt of power on October 22, 2002 and will soon also be the first to air a mobile digital signal. They were one of the ABC affiliates that refused to air NYPD Blue during its first season in 1993-1994. Station Manager Steve Wheeler appeared on Good Morning America to explain his decision. During the interview with Charlie Gibson, Wheeler announced that if the program was successful, WSIL would reconsider. During this first season, Fox affiliate KBSI aired the program during the assigned network slot on Tuesdays nights at 9 Central Time. 1 edit News operation WSIL's newscasts focus almost exclusively on Southern Illinois unlike the other stations in the area. In fact, the station does not even mention the market's other two main cities (Paducah and Cape Girardeau) in its on-air identifications choosing to identify as "Harrisburg / Marion / Carbondale". CBS affiliate KFVS-TV provides some coverage of Southern Illinois from a bureau on East Plaza Drive in Carterville. Their broadcasts are known as News 3 even though program listings online and on satellite services can refer to them as News 3 News. Unlike most ABC affiliates, they do not air a full two-hour morning or Midday newscast during the week. edit Newscast titles *''NewsCenter 3'' (1980s-early 1990s) *''News 3'' (early 1990s-present) edit Station slogans *"Your Local News Source" (late 1980s-early 1990s) *"The Southern Illinois News Leader" (2004-present) edit News team Anchors *Emily Eddington - weekday mornings and multimedia journalist *Kevin Hunsperger - weekday mornings and multimedia journalist *Mark Kiesling - weeknights at 5 and reporter *Edan Schultz - Managing Editor seen weeknights at 6 and 10 **news promotion and special projects *Dana Jay - weeknights at 10 and multimedia journalist *TBD - weekends Meteorologists *Jim Rasor - Chief seen weeknights *Clint Misselhorn - weekday mornings *Katie Walls - weekends Sports *Darren Kinnard - Director seen weeknights at 6 and 10 **''Sports Extra'' and Saluki Basketball with Chris Lowery host *Kelly Burke - weekends and sports reporter Multimedia Journalists *Rachel Gartner - Senior *Ryan Kruger *Jeff Stensland *Christen Craig *Andy Waterman edit References #'^' http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/program.pl?ID=781790 Vanderbilt Television News Archive edit External links *WSIL-DT / KPOB-DT *Query the FCC's TV station database for WSIL-TV *Query the FCC's TV station database for KPOB-TV